


The Betty Carver Adventure Program

by Seiberwing



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America Adventure Program, Fanfiction, Female Friendship, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Meta Fix-It, Metafiction, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-War, Pulp, Radio, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 14:45:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seiberwing/pseuds/Seiberwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The patriarchy-dominated establishment of the radio broadcasting network is not ready for Angie's fixfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Betty Carver Adventure Program

**Author's Note:**

> I have a deep and abiding love for metafiction, the show-within-a-show that we only get contextless glimpses of as we move through the plot itself. It makes worlds feel more filled out when they have their own stories inside them. Also I love remakes of problematic things to make them less problematic and more female/minority friendly, so here's a bit of both.

The pair at the counter looked like a regular Abbot and Costello team, down to the relevant facial hair. The round one was working his jaw like a caught bass as he gasped for air in the thick heat that was smothering the tiny office, while the thin one was fanning himself with a folded piece of paper. A tiny vent on the ceiling was letting in the barest gasps of a breeze that only barely ruffled the stacks of flyers and newspapers that lined the office walls, making the pair’s cell even smaller. A notice for script pick-up hung sadly from the wall next to the door. Its edges curled forward as if it too was suffering from heat exhaustion.

The pair’s attention turned lazily towards Angie as she stepped up to the counter. Costello blinked, as if unsure that she wasn’t just a mirage brought on by the humidity.

“Yeah?”

“Hi. I’m here to pick up my script entry for the Captain America Adventure Program contest?”

It hadn’t seemed hard. She’d read enough scripts to know how the basic framework for a radio show, and the Captain America Adventure Program wasn’t exactly high literature. Swing some fists against lumps of meat, stomp some shoes against a table, rattle a sheet of foil in front of the microphone for a background thunderstorm, season to taste with angry German accents and bold statements of patriotism and you were on your way to a winning performance. And a year’s supply of Dove soap was hardly anything to turn down.

Abbot shook his head to get the marbles rolling again in his skull. “Right. Yeah. Which one did you have?”

“Ooh! Ooh, I know!” Costello had finally managed to start his engine. “ _The Blue Rose of Valor_ , am I right? I told you that was something a lady wrote.” He flipped through one of the stacks and yanked out a script with the number 12 paperclipped to it, handing it over to Abbot.

“The one with Betty and Cap’s picnic in the French countryside?” A grin with all the force and warmth of treacle slid across Abbot’s face. “I’m sorry, sweetie, that doesn’t make for thrilling radio. But you’re gonna have a great career in the women’s advice column.” As he set it down on the counter Angie could make out the words ‘The golden sun slowly slips down over the melancholy horizon of Avon-Provence’ neatly typed at the top of the episode introduction.

She frowned. “What? No. Mine was _Jailbreak at Castle Hydra._ Submitted by A. Martinelli?”

Another set of the slow, sleepy blinks, dropped coins slowly working their way through the rusted machinery of their brain, and the pair abruptly burst into laughter. Angie’s nails left furrows in the old wood of the countertop, face warming from more than the heat.

“That was—oh god, hold on—that wasn’t—” Abbot was having trouble breathing, and had to put his head down on the desk.

“That was you?”

“Yeah, it was me. So?” Angie’s shoulders hunched up. She hadn’t minded losing. After so many acting rejections you got used to losing. But no one had actually laughed in her face before.

“You wrote. You wrote the script where Betty Carver rescues Captain America from the Krauts. Betty. Carver. Oh, god.” The very name sent Costello into paroxysms of laughter again.

“She worked for the Allied army too! Captain America lets her follow him around all the time, she must be good for something.” The door quietly opened behind her and someone else stepped into the room. Angie would have turned to look but she was too busy keeping her back ramrod stiff and her fingers from Abbot’s throat. Murder was not lady-like.

“Yeah, she’s good for getting captured by Hitler all the time. Do you even listen to the show?” Abbot panted as Costello unbuttoned the top of his shirt to let in more air. Maybe if she got them to laugh hard enough they’d both just pass out from lack of oxygen.

“Maybe I wanted to write something a little more original for once, instead of the same stupid plot over and over again. Who wants to hear about a woman who doesn’t ever do anything useful?” Her hand slapped down on the counter, narrowly avoiding splinters. To heck with lady-like, it was never as satisfying as people told you it was. The person who’d entered behind her shifted, coming into the view of her peripheral vision. Prominent muscles bulged his shirt and a dark tattoo swirled up his neck from beneath his collar. He looked nervous, unsure if he should step in to defend Angie’s honor or join in the fraternal laughter.

“Everyone who turns on the radio between 5 and 6pm on a Thursday night, buttercup.” Abbot yanked Angie’s script from the pile and slapped it down next to her, barely missing her fingers. “This show’s not the most realistic thing in the world, but we got our limits. No dame ever rescued Captain America, especially not one who’s shilling sewing machines when she’s not screaming her head off. Even the French picnic script wasn’t as stupid as yours.” He leaned forward with a tooth-baring smirk, only backing away when Angie leaned forward to meet him with equal ferocity.

“Maybe if you wrote her doing something besides sewing and screaming she’d be a character people actually cared about. But you don’t talk to actual women very much, do you?” The muscled man took a few steps back. Angie glanced to him, briefly meeting a rough face with eyes like a frightened rabbit before resuming her extra-strength glare at Abbot.

The humor was fast fading from Abbott’s face. He’d laugh when a fake woman found a streak of violence in her, wasn’t so tolerant when a real woman did it. Wasn’t that always the way. “Our listeners might buy a supersoldier who can kill twenty armored Nazis and a Tiger Tank with one throw of his shield but they know how the war worked.”

“Nobody fought the Nazis in high heels,” Costello added, just to be part of the crowd. “Especially next to Captain America. He’d never put up with some boring girl riding his back trying to be uppity.”

Angie smiled, the sort of sharp smile with the narrowed eyes she’d seen Peggy do when she wanted to impart ‘I could take your teeth out through your eye sockets but I won’t, not because I find you favorable but because you’re just not worth the effort.’ Peggy’d been her role model for sharp smiles to men even before she’d found out what other discomforts her dear English could put a man into.

“Like I said. You clearly don’t meet a lot of women.”

Angie heard the door open and close again as the muscled man finally fled the room. She put her hand down on the _Blue Rose of Valor_ before Abbot could snap it up again, nails scraping the side of his finger as he yanked his own hand back up.

“And I’ll just take that one too. For my other friend. Have fun rattling your aluminum foil.”

The heat was almost as bad out on the street. Even the wind seemed to be lethargic, gently drifting down the street without providing more than the barest gasps of relief, and the passing cars provided more of a draft than the weather itself.

Angie caught up to the bearded man as he was fleeing in heavy workman’s boots towards the nearest bus stop. When she grabbed his shoulder he flinched away like a naughty child caught by his mother tracking mud into the house.

“I think this is yours.” Angie handed him the script and he took it with nervous fingers that had brick dust under the nails. People brushed past them in slow, shuffling steps with sweat dripping down the backs of their necks and their heads bowed. The annoying voice in the back of Angie’s head that was constantly on guard against social nonconformity said that they somehow knew about her script, and were purposefully ostracizing her for it.

“I didn’t think it was that great anyway,” the man admitted. His voice was smoother than she’d expected, tinged with a pleasant Italian accent, and he whispered as if he were passing along government secrets. “I’ve written a few like this. Just fake scripts for episodes I wished they’d play, it’s a stupid little hobby. I like the show, I really do, but I wanted to give it a little more…”

“Variety?”

“Yeah.” The man shrugged. “I just. I dunno. I feel like Betty deserved better. She and Cap never got a good moment alone. I never cared about the soap but I wanted to see if I could get it into the show. I know she’s not real, I just--”

Angie patted his shoulder. “I know. And I just wanted to give Betty a chance to do more than get hung over a deathtrap. Captain America didn’t win the war by himself.”

“Yeah.” Under the thick beard it was hard to tell if the was starting to blush or if the summer sun had managed to penetrate that far down to leave a sunburn inside its dark depths. “I’m Chico,” he mumbled.

“I’m Angie.”

“I’d like to read your script sometime, if you don’t mind. It sounded fun.”

“And I wouldn’t mind a peek at yours.” She wondered if this counted as flirting, and if she wanted it to count as flirting, or if they really were talking about rewriting the wartime exploits of real people caricatured into constructs that the general populace found easier to understand. “If you ever make it down to the L&L Automat, there’s a free slice of pie waiting for you. The all-American shield-swinging apple kind.”

Angie smiled, and the man’s hunched shoulders slowly began to unclench. Flirting or not, you could always use more friends with large muscles who were even taller when you could get them to hold their head up. ("Betty Carver" would know that better than anyone.)

\---------------------------------------

Peggy didn’t need to go to the L&L to visit Angie anymore, not when they were living in the same house (even if the house was so big they could easily go days at a time without seeing each other), but it felt comfortable to be here. The food was plentiful, the taste was familiar, and the little chip on her favorite table reminded of the time she took down half of the SSR with two plates and her fists, which always made one more chipper on a dull day. Around her, the last dregs of the evening’s customers sat sipping their cold drinks and reading their newspapers, hoping that the passing of the sun would make it bearable enough to strike out for home.

Angie was scheduled to clock out in half an hour and she’d stashed her bag at Peggy’s table, the better to flee as soon as her overlord permitted her freedom. It sat next to Peggy as she went over a surveillance report, making notes in the margins with a stubby pencil until boredom made her eyes wander.

Sticking out of the top of Angie’s back was a set of papers stapled together—another script for the budding actress, no doubt. Angie had actually managed to score a few tiny parts in the past few months, including one with an actual line. Her fervor for the stage and the screen had been running wild ever since, even if the actual product she brought home to practice wasn’t exactly _Casablanca_.

The words ‘Captain America’ caught Peggy’s eye as she turned back to take another bite of her ham sandwich. She looked up to check if Angie was still making the rounds, then clandestinely tugged it out of the bag. One couldn’t blame a spy for being nosy. Peggy took a hard sip of her iced tea to bolster her flagging attention span and unfolded the crumpled papers to see what dreck Angie had put her heart on the line for this time,

The script wasn’t…bad, exactly. At least not as bad as the other snippets she’d heard of the Captain America Idiocy Program. There was the expected amount of “[LOUD CRASH]” and “[BULLETS FIRE]”, a pleasing lack of “[FEMALE SCREAM]” and “[SEWING MACHINE WHIR]”, and the unexplained sound effect of “[GEENTESHNISH FRAINDIRT MACHINE ACTIVATES]”. Steve was about as in character as he was in his war bond advertisements but the action itself was straightforward, even sensible if one allowed for the melodrama. Straightforward and sensible to the point of familiarity, actually…

Peggy flipped forward a few pages, and then a few more, lips curling into a focused frown. If you ignored the bad dialogue and dramatic flair, the resemblance to the mission of June 8th, 1944 was impossible to miss. There was the infiltration, the scaling of the castle walls on the night of the new moon, the Howling Commandos simulating a full frontal assault with Jim and Gabe falsifying the broadcasts on HYDRA’s personal wavelength, her accidental one-woman-brawl with the surprised occupants of the Castle Hydra commissary, all of it with snappy rejoinders and snappier punches. The details were so vivid and specific that it could only have been retold by someone who’d actually been there. Dum Dum, perhaps? She couldn’t see him selling out for the sake of whatever pittance they paid the radio writers but he might have let the story spill out over a few (dozen) shots of whiskey.

Angie abruptly dropped into the seat in front of her, leaning over the table with a grin of relief. “Hey, English. I was thinking we might go out tonight and—”

Peggy waved the stapled papers in her face. “Angie, where did you get this script?”

Panic widened Angie’s eyes. “I—”

“It reads like a mission the Howling Commandos and I went on during the war. I thought they completely made up all the nonsense they put on this show but this is far too accurate to be an accident.”

“Well-”

“They even knew about the Gentechnisch Veränderter Supersoldaten, and we could barely get the head of our operations to believe that happened.”

Angie’s voice got smaller and quieter with each protest, and her hat was dropping low over her frizzing hair. “I mean, it’s—“

“Obviously it’s been translated for the radio to make it more palatable for mass consumption.” She slapped the script against the table in frustration, as if the paper itself was responsible for its contents. “I certainly didn’t take a Thompson inside with me, I wouldn’t have been able to carry that much weight up the castle wall. They made Jim Morita into Jack Morrison, which is foul but expected. Baron Zemo may have been perilous but he was neither ravishing nor female and if he was the Red Skull’s mistress we didn’t have a chance to talk about it while I was knocking his teeth out. I don’t know why they’ve replaced him with this sultry Madame Hydra character-”

“I thought a little sex appeal would liven it up,” Angie squeaked.

A silence hung over the ham sandwich. Peggy swallowed her last bite, and then carefully laid the script back down on the table.

“It was an open contest,” Angie said, wringing her hands. “Best script gets a cash prize and a year supply of Dove’s Soap, you just had to put a plug for it into the script.”

“Ah. Which is why Captain America wants to know how Betty is going to get all that Kraut blood out of her uniform.”

“Yeah. If anyone’d known that it’d be you. I mean, Betty.”

“We usually just used cold water.”

“I figured.”

“You do realize this was an actual mission that’s potentially classified.”

“Yeah.”

“Not something I told you so it could be published to the entire world.”

“Even the radio men wouldn’t believe it, Peggy.”

“You did this all for the soap?”

“No. I did it so…” Angie hunched up her shoulders, her fidgeting fingers rubbing the last stains from a leaky jar of mustard off her skin. “Look, I know Betty Carver’s supposed to be you. Everyone else doesn’t even know you existed, let alone everything you did. Even the guys at your bureau don’t believe that you’re at least two for two in keeping some complete lunatic America from turning into a giant cinder. This was just a little way of. I don’t know. Of letting them know what you really were.” She put her head down and thumped it a few times against the table before putting it on top of her arms. “Stupid, I know. She’s not even real.”

Oh, dear. Peggy pushed the script aside and shifted to Angie’s side of the booth. “You didn’t have to do that for me. I know what I am. You know it too. And it means far more to me that you know it than the kind of idiots who get their historical knowledge from a show that has Captain America lecturing his audience about buying skidproof tires.” Her arm slipped around Angie, giving her a tight hug from the side.

“M’sorry,” Angie mumbled, leaning into the hug.

“Don’t be.”

“My script was stupid.”

“Compared to the scripts they actually put on that show, it was Shakespeare. And I did like Antoinette Martel."

Angie turned her head to the side, peeping from the gap between her hair and her elbow. “Y’did?” she said in a small, twitchy voice. “She was just. Thought it needed more women, is all. Didn’t mean to leave your friend out.”

“I doubt Jacques would mind having his place taken by a devilishly clever actress from the French underground.” Peggy pushed the remaining half of her sandwich towards Angie, who managed to drag it into her mouth without actually lifting her head up out of her arms. “She reminds me of a woman I met when I went undercover in Austria. Greta had a much nastier temper but she did know her way around a stiletto like no one's business. Would you like to hear about her once we get back to the house? Assuming that story won’t make it to the radio, of course.”

Angie slowly sat back up again, still looking sheepish even as she reached out to return Peggy’s side hug. She stuffed the script back into her bag, jamming it down until it was crumpled under her lipstick and pocketbook. “You know what, English? I’d really like that.”

\---------------------------------------

 **NARRATOR**  
The _Exploits of Valor_ podcast is made possible by donations from our generous listeners. Visit the donate link at the top of our website, or go to our Patreon page at  www.patreon.com/exploitsofvalor to help us stay heroically on the air. We're also brought to you by Gaia’s Touch Soaps, purveyors of hypoallergenic, earth-friendly soaps and bath products to relax you after a hearty day of crime fighting or pep you up in the morning so you can get out there and defend the world from danger. Visit them at www.gaiastouchsoaps.com!

This week for our Guests of Valor summer showcase we’re bringing you a very special story that’s been decades in the making. Some of our older viewers may remember the _Captain America Adventure Program_ , a set of rollicking fictional exploits about the wartime efforts of national hero Steve Rogers. They may also remember the equally fictional Betty Carver, Captain America’s less than helpful love interest who could never quite seem to keep herself out of trouble.

In 1948 a Broadway hopeful named Angela Martinelli wrote a script that gave us a very different perspective on Captain America’s oft-imperiled lady love. The script was rejected by the producers and sat in a shoebox for almost seventy years, patiently awaiting a time when the world was ready for a story where Betty Carver got to cause a little trouble of her own. In honor of Angela’s 95th birthday, her granddaughter sent us this unique story, so that a work that survived the fall of radio and the rise of the podcast will finally see the light of day. Now, after very long last, we are proud to present _Jailbreak at Castle Hydra_!

 **SFX**  
(Theme song plays)

 **NARRATOR**  
Deep in the bowels of Castle Hydra, America’s favorite son lies bound hand and foot to an operating table by powerful chains of tyrantium alloy. He is loomed over by the handsome yet fiendish Baron Hydra, favored lieutenant of the Red Skull.

 **SFX**  
(Chains rattling emphatically)

 **CAPTAIN AMERICA**  
(Defiant yet noble) I’ll never tell you our Allied secrets! None of your torments can make me talk!

 **BARON HYDRA**  
(Gloating in a ferocious German accent) Talk? All I want is for you to shut up until my beloved leader returns to cut you open and take you apart for his experiments. He’ll be so delighted with me that I’ve finally captured the most painful thorn in his side. But go ahead and scream all you want, Captain America. No one will be coming for you! (He laughs maniacally)

 **NARRATOR**  
But outside the cold stone walls, above the foul dungeon reeking of blood and misery, Captain America’s loyal colleagues are preparing a daring rescue to regain their fallen comrade.

 **SFX**  
(The wind whistles fiercely across the cliffs)

 **COMMANDO #1**  
All right, we’ve got the fake charges planted under the castle bridge. When the HYDRA goons come out to investigate, our allies in the resistance will lay down cover fire to draw them out of the castle while you infiltrate from the back. We won’t have much time until the Red Skull arrives, but if our radio man Jack Tamada can confuse his armed convoy with false instructions we might just have enough time to get into the castle before he arrives.

 **COMMANDO #2**  
(Concerned and uncertain) Betty, are you sure you can do it? Even if you make it up there you’ll be heading into a nest of the Red Skull’s worst vipers. And you’re only one woman!

 **COMMANDO #1**  
(Derision at his colleague's lack of trust) One woman? What kind of greenhorn are you? This is Agent Betty Carver, the best-kept secret the Allies have! If anyone can do it, she can!

 **BETTY CARVER**  
(Betty laughs, used to this treatment. She has a British accent, upper class and light without being snobbish.) Let’s not get caught up in idle flattery, men. Climbing a sheer stone wall in pitch darkness during a German windstorm won’t be a spring picnic in Greenwich Park, but I’ve done far worse things in the course of this brutal war. As long as you can keep their attention away from the windows overlooking the ocean, I’ll be able to get inside—and then the real hard part will begin. Now, you have your marching orders. Let’s go bring our boy home!

 **SFX**  
(Boots clicking together in unison)

 **COMMANDOS**  
(Excited) Yes, ma’am!

**Author's Note:**

> As a final sidenote, Greta was also my late grandmother's name. She was a Jewish refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria in the 1930s, was a terrifying person in her later life, and passed away a little over a year ago after Death finally stopped being too frightened to approach her. The best thing the SSR could have done with her as an agent was to point her at the Nazis and then stand well back.


End file.
